THE TRICKSTER AND THE PARANORMAL

George P. Hansen

George P. Hansen was professionally employed in parapsychology laboratories for eight years—three at the Rhine Research Center in Durham, North Carolina, and five at Psychophysical Research Laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey. His experiments included remote viewing, card guessing, ganzfeld, electronic random number generators, séance phenomena, and ghosts. He has been active in a number of psychic, UFO, and New Age organizations, and he helped found a skeptics group.

His papers in scientific journals cover mathematical statistics, fraud and deception, the skeptics movement, conjurors in parapsychology, and exposés of hoaxes. He is a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians.

The paranormal encompasses everything from levitating monks to ESP, from spirits to cattle mutilations—an incredible and unsavory hodgepodge. The mix seems incoherent. But the trickster makes sense of it.

Among other things, this book explains:

Why parapsychology and UFOs are shunned by establishment science.
How anthropology and literary criticism apply to the paranormal.

Why psychic phenomena are associated with mystical practices.

Why tabloids often put paranormal features on their front pages.

Trickster theories are not well known. They are scattered across disciplines and hidden in obscure academic tomes. The Trickster and the Paranormal brings them together.